BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Last month, the House of Representatives approved the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004. It raises the fine per violation from 27,500 dollars to half a million dollars. This means that the FCC will have the power to levy multiple fines in the multi-millions for indiscretions on nationally syndicated shows. On Wednesday, broadcasters from around the country gathered with regulators, parents' groups and media watchdogs to mull over the issues. Oddly, the National Association of Broadcasters' summit on responsible programming, which was filled with representatives from big media, was closed to the press. But Broadcasting & Cable magazine's Bill McConnell was lurking nearby, and he suspects that this time the broadcast chiefs were not flagellating themselves at nearly the rate they were in the congressional hearings over Janet Jackson's super bowl breast.

BILL McCONNELL: They were, you know, trying to say more: Okay we hear you. Here's our point of view. We don't think that the situation is as bad as you say it is, but we know you have some concerns that are reasonable, and we think there are a few things we can do to make it better.

BOB GARFIELD: A few-- things.

BILL McCONNELL:I think eventually the broadcasters will come up with something a little bit stronger than they have now, possibly reviving some form of the old Code of Conduct, or maybe something a little bit less strict that would strongly encourage broadcasters to set up a block of time for family viewing that isn't going to have raunchy or racy programming. But I think it's going to take a while. Yesterday, Eddie Fritz, the president of the National Association of Broadcasters, said: Hey, you know, we're not going to have something in 30 days or 60 days. It's going to be a long term project. By the sound of that you can be guaranteed that nothing's going to happen immediately.

BOB GARFIELD:Or will it? While media heavies hem and haw over how to combat excessive indecency and excessive fines in the future, how are radio hosts and shock jocks reacting to the crackdown? Jesse Walker is the author of Rebels on the Air, an alternative history of radio in America, and the managing editor of Reason Magazine. In the last issue, he quotes the FCC's descriptions of a Scooby Doo sketch performed by recently-fired shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge, the FCC renders it in bureaucratese.

JESSE WALKER: The first skit begins when Shaggy tells Scooby Doo that he needs crack cocaine but has no money to buy it. Scooby Doo responds that Shaggy could -- and we bleeped out a couple of words here -- to pay for the drugs. In the next skit, Fat Albert, aka Fat Diddy Daddy, gets killed in a drive-by shooting after bragging that Jennifer Lopez had been bleeping Diddy Daddy's bleep the previous night, and it ends with: This segment contains sufficiently graphic and explicit references to sexual and excretory organs and activities to satisfy the first criterion of our contextual analysis.

BOB GARFIELD:So in January, for this and a few other programs, the FCC charged Bubba the Love Sponge with the highest fine ever levied by the commission. What has been the result of this fine throughout the country?

JESSE WALKER: One interesting thing about this fine is that it came a few days before the infamous Janet Jackson incident, and then that, of course, got everybody upset and Congress started talking, and the FCC started making more audible noises, and companies like Clear Channel and Infinity that own all these radio stations started falling all over themselves to claim that they had never realized that such stuff was going on over the airwaves and to fire people like Bubba the Love Sponge. When people aren't being fired, they've been dropped from stations. Howard Stern was famously dropped from several Clear Channel stations, although he's still being carried on, in particular, Infinity across the country.

BOB GARFIELD:Apart from fining stations, there has been talk of actually fining the performers themselves, so that if you have a morning zoo in, you know, Oshkosh, Wisconsin and you get very, very vulgar, it's not management who's going to pay the fine, but you.

JESSE WALKER: I've heard about that. I'm not sure it's going to pass. I think that it's an interesting way around the dilemma that certain conservative members of Congress might face, where they don't want to make things difficult for media companies that, perhaps, donate to their campaigns, and yet they want to punish this kind of broadcasting. On the other hand, I mean it's absurd to expect a human being to cough up the kinds of fines that they're now levying on stations. I think that a lot of them would end up being uncollectible.

BOB GARFIELD:Underlying this whole question is the fundamental hypocrisy of having shock jocks on the air to be outrageous in order to generate ratings, while there is this sort of undefinable threshold that they cannot cross where they become subject to gigantic fines. What do you suppose the calculus is, in 2004, for these guys -- they're mostly guys -- in performing day to day.

JESSE WALKER: Until Bubba the Love Sponge was fired and his website was taken down, it was proudly having a banner across the top: Listen to the Stuff the FCC Doesn't Want You to Hear or words to that effect, and there's always been like this sort of outlaw image to them. I think they imagine they're idealists and they're sort of slapping themself on the head and saying: 'You can't say that on the radio; go get 'em.' But, in fact, the reason why they were able to get away with so much from the point of view of the FCC is that over the last ten years, number one, there's been much less enforcement, and number two, where there has been enforcement, I mean there would always be a new record fine against Infinity Broadcasting for something Howard Stern said. The shows were so profitable that it was, as Michael Copp, the FCC commissioner likes to complain, considered a cost of doing business. Much changed, in terms of the calculus, is the fact that the FCC is now much more serious about cracking down on indecency, and then when Congress gets in the act, people really get worried, and the calculus is radically changed, and I think that the smart ones are maybe starting to think about what new shtick might not we be able to do until there's yet another change in the air? You know, can I go and become like a deejay or a right wing talk radio host or one of the other templates for a career as a radio broadcaster.

BOB GARFIELD: Are you getting a sense of deja vu through all of this? I mean is this like Lenny Bruce all over again?

JESSE WALKER:There used to be complaints that people would say that, you know, Lenny Bruce died so that this could happen? On the other hand, nobody's being persecuted the way Lenny Bruce was being personally persecuted. But that same sort of fear of words and that fear that there's certain topics that simply should not be discussed, even to a paying nightclub audience or to a voluntary radio listening audience, that's coming back. It's like a pendulum. It comes back every few years. The good news, for those of us who are civil libertarians is that sooner or later the pendulum is probably going to swing back the other way, but you can't always count on that, and I think it's important to stand up for the right to free speech in the First Amendment, even when it's someone who's not nearly as interesting or funny as Lenny Bruce was.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, Jesse. Thanks very much.

JESSE WALKER: Alright, thanks.

BOB GARFIELD: Jesse Walker is managing editor of Reason Magazine.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: While the industry ponders its image problem, few legislators have spied an opening to put media consolidation back on the table. The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, now awaiting action in the Senate, has two amendments attached to it. One, sponsored by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan, puts a one year hold on the rules passed late last year that would allow big media companies to get even bigger.

BYRON DORGAN: I think that there's evidence that these larger ownership groups have had more complaints filed against them, and one would expect that the farther you get away from what is called "localism," the more likely it is that someone far away is going to make a decision about what is broadcast in your area that may very well conflict with what you think represent good standards.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So there are more complaints against the big companies, but maybe that's because they own more stations. Has it really been shown that locally owned and operated media maintain a higher standard of decency or a more responsive one than the big companies?

BYRON DORGAN: Well, the amendment that I offered that passed the Commerce Committee recently simply asks for a study -- what I asked for is that we freeze or, or delay, rather, the FCC ownership rules from going into effect while this study occurs. It does seem to me that the larger the concentration of ownership in broadcast properties, the more likely it is that what is heard and seen in your local area has nothing to do with local standards or what people locally think. In fact, we had testimony before the Commerce Committee of a television station owner in a southern state saying, you know, the network was pushing a program that I felt was disgusting, and I didn't want to show it in my area, but I didn't have any choice. They forced me to show it with the threat of substantial penalties. That that's the kind of thing I think we ought to resolve, because I think the use of the airwaves free of charge for radio and television broadcasters also requires responsibility, and part of that responsibility is to serve local interests and to preserve a sense of localism.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now a majority of the Congress seems to be in harmony on the issue of indecency and the need to do something about it, but the issue of broadcast ownership caps is quite controversial, and one lawmaker remarked that tinkering with the caps could be the, quote, "poison pill" that kills the whole decency bill.

BYRON DORGAN: Adding this amendment to the bill that deals with the indecency is not something that is going to kill this bill. In fact, we've already voted in the U.S. Senate on the ownership cap, as you know, and Senator Trent Lott and I offered the amendment, and the Senate has expressed itself on that. We don't believe the FCC rules which will allow much more concentrated ownership in the media properties is an appropriate rule, and the Senate's already expressed itself on that.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But what about the House?

BYRON DORGAN: Well, you know, we legislate in the Senate. We can't control the U.S. House or Representatives.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Broadcasters were meeting in Washington to chat about these issues, and from your perspective, would the system be hurt or helped by broadcasters attempting to self-censor and err on the side of conservatism in order to avoid further regulation or crippling fines?

BYRON DORGAN: I, well I think broadcasters have always had a responsibility to think through what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. You know, we used to have, for example, speaking of television, a family viewing hour when certain things during a time when children might be watching television would be inappropriate. That's not new, and it's not radical and it's not unique. I would hope that we will see from broadcasters themselves some sense of concern about this and see them taking some action on their own.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:You have a great deal of interest in media consolidation anyway, because of the incident in Minot, North Dakota -- the lack of response from the local radio stations there that were automated and so the public could not respond in time to an emergency -- a chemical spill.

BYRON DORGAN: Well, that is correct, and you know a, a--explosion of some train cars loaded with anhydrous ammonia at 2 a.m. -- it covered a major part of a city of 50,000 people with a deadly gas-- one was killed; many were injured. Hundreds went to the hospital. I mean - and they, you know, they tried to sound an emergency alarm and couldn't get anyone at the radio station to pick up and-- why? Because they're running homogenized music through a board from, you know, a thousand miles away. In my judgment, local control of localism in broadcast properties is, is something that's very important to the community, and we've gotten far away from that, and I would like the FCC not to be able to move us farther away even still with the new regulations, and that's why I've been fighting them so hard.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so, if the issue of health and safety hasn't pulled it back, perhaps the issue of indecency will.

BYRON DORGAN:Well, the issue of indecency is a, an issue that, you know, has a tipping point on its own, and any time I have the opportunity to offer the amendment dealing with concentration of ownership, I'm going to do that, along with Senator Lott. That's why we put it on this bill.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, thank you very much.

BYRON DORGAN: All right. Thanks a lot.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Senator Byron Dorgan is a Democrat from North Dakota.

BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, a TV ratings war, a radio air war, and a farewell to America's favorite Brit --who was also Britain's favorite Yank.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media, from NPR.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Last month, this headline in the Dallas Morning News: Fox News Channel Continues to Crush CNN. So, that's been conventional wisdom in the cable news biz for at least two years, and a quick search of On the Media's archives shows us parroting that same seemingly indisputable fact that Fox News was beating CNN in the ratings game. But Steve Rendall of the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting does dispute it. In an article titled The Ratings Mirage: Why Fox Has Higher Ratings When CNN Has More Viewers. Steve, welcome to the show.

STEVE RENDALL: It's great to be on, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So you say that Fox is not actually beating CNN in the ratings, or actually, to be more precise, you say that on any given day, more people tune in to CNN than to Fox News. So what's the difference, then, between actual viewership and ratings?

STEVE RENDALL: Actually the number that's usually reported in the media is a number that Nielsen Media Research releases for free. That number is the average number of viewers that are tuning into a show or a station at any typical moment. That number gives extra weight to heavy viewers -- viewers who tune in to a station and linger there for a long period of time. For instance, if you tune in to Fox in the evening, first you tune in to Special Report with Brit Hume; then it goes through that into Shepherd Smith's show and into the O'Reilly Factor. You are counted every minute. You can show up in the ratings as several viewers. But there's another number called the "cume" which is not published by Nielsen Media Research. They only release it to their paying clients, and it counts the total number of viewers who tune into a station or a show on a given day for 6 minutes or more. And it counts all viewers. And CNN has a higher cume than Fox.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So, obviously, this speaks to the different way that those two channels are used.

STEVE RENDALL:One of the ad buyers I talked to told me that CNN is like news radio. People tune in for a short amount of time to get the news and the headlines, but they treat Fox like talk radio, where they tune in for longer periods of time to hear the personality-driven and appealing programming that's available there. Now this could change at any time, but as it stands now, on any given day, CNN has about 20 percent more individual viewers than Fox does.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now, you wrote in your piece that reporters who use the Nielsen numbers ought to explain that the data are not entirely reliable measures of popularity and that really the numbers serve no purpose for journalists or the public.

STEVE RENDALL: Well, yes, they're not sort of a democratic tally of who's more popular. They're collected by the Nielsen Media Research Center to provide very complex data to advertisers. This gets back to that question of heavy viewers and light viewers. Advertisers want viewers to hang around long enough to see their ads several times, but they're not interested in reaching the same viewer over and over again throughout the day. They'd like to reach more viewers. By the same token, advertisers don't want to advertise on stations where the viewers tune in for so short a time that they don't see very many ads. So it's a tradeoff. One vice president of CNN that I quote in the piece says: We'd like to have Fox's average. Fox would like to have our cume.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But I think it's safe to say that Fox would love to have CNN's ad revenue, cause they're still making substantially more.

STEVE RENDALL:CNN is still making more money than Fox. It's because they have those lighter viewers that are a more valuable demographic. Lighter viewers tend to be younger, busier and more free-spending. I expect that Fox will surpass CNN at some point in cume, but that will not necessarily mean that they'll bring in more ad revenue, because Fox will still have a core viewership made up of those heavy viewers that are not as attractive to advertisers.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So let's assume, then, that you're right --that Fox is trailing CNN in actual numbers of viewers, and that it's trailing CNN with regard to ad revenue. It nevertheless has the perception that it's trouncing CNN in the ratings. What's been the net effect of this perception?

STEVE RENDALL: Well, I think it's great public relations for Fox. In fact, there is one thing I quote in the piece where Brian Killmede who's on Fox & Friends, very successful Fox morning show, responding to somebody who has said that Fox leans to the right. He says "Well, the people made us number one, so what does that say about the United States?"

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What does Fox News have to say about your findings? Have you heard from anybody?

STEVE RENDALL:Well, I haven't heard any actual official response. I did get an email from a Fox V.P. who - it was very snarky, very sarcastic -- it said "Great piece. Sorry your data's all old. We're ahead of CNN now in cume." And I quickly wrote back to him. I said, "Well, if you are, I'd like to see the numbers." Those cume numbers, remember, are not published. They're only provided for paying clients like Fox. "Send me the numbers. I'd be glad to do an update." I haven't heard from him.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Steve Rendall, thank you very much.

STEVE RENDALL: Thanks.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Steve Rendall is senior analyst for the liberal media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting -- or FAIR. We called Fox News spokesman Robert Zimmerman about FAIR's research. He says Nielsen ratings are regarded as the key measure. Nobody pays attention to the cume. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a new media war was joined on talk radio. [CLIP PLAYS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a new media war was joined on talk radio. [CLIP PLAYS]

AL FRANKEN: Broadcasting from an underground bunker, 4500 feet below Dick Cheney's bunker, Air America Radio is on the air. I'm Al Franken, and welcome to the O'Franken Factor. Today is both an ending and a beginning. An end to the right wing dominance of talk radio. The beginning of a battle for truth, of a battle for justice, a battle, indeed, for America itself. Not to be-- grandiose.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:In this battle, there are many foot soldiers, but only two real generals, and one of them is Franken, the driving force behind Air America, the liberal network that could. You can hear its lineup of personalities, among them Franken, Janeane Garofalo and Chuck D, currently on six stations; also satellite radio and the internet. Franken's show starts at noon. There's a reason for that. [CLIP PLAYS]

RUSH LIMBAUGH: I'm not just observing the media. I am the new media. I am...

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Opposing General Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Greetings, and welcome ladies and gentlemen to the award-winning, thrill-packed, double-exciting, increasingly popular, growing by leaps and bounds Rush Limbaugh Program. We come to you each day to day as we are, from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:His dominance cemented long ago, scores of other conservative hosts have ridden to success on his coattails, building a huge audience for his message on the AM band. So much so that there's no home for liberals on most talk radio, which is why Air America is buying or leasing its own stations. Franken says his real goal is to push Bush out of the White House. The Air America chiefs say it will take three years for the network to make a profit. Franken's contract lasts a year.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you see yourself doing this for longer than a year?

AL FRANKEN: I think I want to see how much I like it.

MARK WALSH: I think Al, and I don't want to speak for him, because he's an amazing cat--

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mark Walsh is CEO of Progress Media, the parent company of Air America.

MARK WALSH:-- but I think Al's platform and, and the megaphone that this gives him for his viewpoints and his comedy, I hope that it becomes addictive, so that he wants to do this with us for as long as, as he will have us.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Franken's first show, with co-host Catherine Lanfer, late of Minnesota Public Radio, featured a call-in from Al Gore, himself trying to launch a liberal cable channel. Guest Michael Moore gamely apologized for supporting Ralph Nader four years ago.

AL FRANKEN: Michael, is there something you'd like to say to the vice president?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: After Air America's first broadcast day, there was a rush to judgment. Variety called it an awkward affair. The New York Times said the first day highlighted the difficulty in trying to match the fervor and ferocity of right wing radio. The Washington Post called the O'Franken Factor meandering and discursive, and worse still, almost NPR-like. I didn't hear that.

AL FRANKEN: Now we gotta go--

CATHERINE LANFER: Oh, wow.

AL FRANKEN: -- and check in on our friend Anne Coulter, and--

CATHERINE LANFER: And for those of you who are just joining us, we locked her in our green room-that was about two-and-a-half hours ago… [LAUGHTER]

CHUCK D: You know, number one, coming out of the box we're going to speak to the converted and the curious.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rapper and Air America Host Chuck D says his role will be to bring in people from his background.

CHUCK D: Quite often, the people from my class are, are locked out of the equation. Sometimes it could get to a point where the discussions are white Americans dealing with white American issues, and they happen to be at the two different extremes, but everybody else is on the outside, looking in.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:It's oft been said that talk radio runs on the anger of the outsider. Air America was launched on the rage of liberals who feel that President Bush hijacked their country.

AL FRANKEN: Our friends on the right say that we liberals are, are angry. Yeah! Yeah. We're angry. For a lot of us, it's because of 9/11. On that horrible day, our nation became as united as I have ever seen it, and the world was behind us. George W. Bush had an amazing opportunity to lead this country, this world, into a new American century, in a spirit of mutual purpose and mutual sacrifice, and he blew it. He blew it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But Limbaugh was angry first, and he does angry better.

RUSH LIMBAUGH:The idea that there was unity, that the Democrats were united in purpose behind this president is a myth. They were worried this was an opportunity for Bush to display greatness, remember that? And they're sitting around and they're saying: Well we've all unified. We have all this unity. We were at one with ourselves and at one with the world, and Bush has destroyed all of it - well, that's just a crock.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Still, the liberals have deep reserves of untapped rage to direct against a legion of Limbaughs, if only they can stay mad.

AL FRANKEN: J'accuse!

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But what if Kerry wins? Richard Viguerie is a longtime master in the use of alternative media like direct mail and talk radio to promote the issues of the far right.

Richard Viguerie: If Kerry is elected president this fall, then I think it's going to be very hard for Air America to sustain an audience out there--

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But what about Rush now? Rush is doing as well as he ever has done, and both the White House and the Congress and, and arguably the Supreme Court are in the hands of Republicans.

Richard Viguerie: Yes, Republicans, but not conservatives. Grassroots conservatives have never been in control of the government. Republicans have, and this Republican administration is a great disappointment these days to conservatives.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Oh. Apparently Rush's ever-expanding reach is due to the fact that, even now, the government is not conservative enough. Maybe never can be conservative enough. On the other hand, according to Vigare, John Kerry's ascension to the White House should be sufficient to assuage the liberals.

MARK WALSH: I vociferously disagree.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Progress Media CEO Mark Walsh.

MARK WALSH: In fact, if John Kerry wins in '04, I think our business is even better. Why? Because Tom DeLay ain't going away. Nino Scalia ain't going away. Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott and, and Bill Frist are not going away. In fact, when John Kerry wins, there'll be just as much pomposity and idiocy for us to skewer on the airwaves as there is today.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Maybe Rush has a point. Right now the stakes have never been higher, and conservative or liberal, everybody is mad as hell. The pressure is rising, and the ozone is filling with hot air. Looks like perfect weather for talk radio.
[MUSIC FROM MASTERPIECE THEATRE UP & UNDER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Oh, let's not. [MUSIC OUT] Look: I loved Masterpiece Theatre, and especially I loved Alistair Cooke's courtly introductions to British Lit. transmuted into television. But, as Cooke himself observed, he was merely head waiter to those TV feasts, there to explain what's on the menu and how those dishes were composed. He was not the chef. But he was, in fact, a master chef. For an astonishing 58 years on BBC Radio, he dished out complex and savory servings of America to an eager and curious world. He died this week at the age of 95, after chronicling a nation in continuous evolution. His first Letter from America offered this description of a long line of customers for nylon stockings in post-war New York.

ALISTAIR COOKE: People get afraid they'll miss their assigned pair of stockings, so a woman queues up for one pair, and her husband nonchalantly disguised, for another. Need I say there are also in these queues smooth-looking gents and crummy-looking youths with fake ration certificates who have no personal use for nylons and no wife or girlfriend to be a hero for. They're just doing the rounds of the queues by way of running their own modest black market.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Decade after decade, he sent missives filled with vivid description, historical context and his own fascination with his adopted country. But in truth, though he was in America, he was not of America, and therein lies the loss for most of us. We never had the chance to see ourselves in his eyes. Usually, he saw us at a distance, albeit a short one, but once he found himself a mere ten feet from an American tragedy, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, he captured the moment like a camera lens.

ALISTAIR COOKE: There was a head on the floor streaming blood, and somebody put a Kennedy, Kennedy boater under it, and the blood trickled down like chocolate sauce on a nice cake. There were flashlights by now, and the button eyes of Ethel Kennedy turned to cinders. She was slapping the young man, and he was saying "Listen, lady -- I'm hurt too." And down on the greasy floor was a huddle of clothes, and staring out of it the face of Bobby Kennedy, like the stone face of a child lying on a cathedral tomb.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Then he viewed the emotional fallout with the same sharp focus and shook his head.

ALISTAIR COOKE:Five days later I still cannot rise to the general lamentations about a sick society. I, for one, do not feel like an accessory to a crime, and I reject almost as a frivolous obscenity the sophistry of collective guilt --the idea that I or the American people killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Robert Francis Kennedy. I said as much as this to a younger friend, and he replied, "Yes, but - and I too - I don't feel implicated in the murder of John or Bobby Kennedy - but when Martin Luther King is killed, the only people who know that you and I are not like the killer are you and I." It's a tremendous sentence. It exposes, I think, the present danger to America. The more people talk about collective guilt, the more they will feel it, and after 300 years of subjection and prejudice, any poor Negro or desperate outcast is likely to act as if it were true that the American people are not their derelicts -- are the villains.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Alistair Cooke's staunchly conservative principles were sometimes out of step with his adopted nation and with his native Britain, but even when he departed from the views of modern America, even when he couldn't quite fathom them, his was a bracing perspective, the product of a first class mind. As Prime Minister Tony Blair observed this week, "millions found wisdom and comfort in Cooke's Letters from America." But toward the end perhaps no one needed them as much as he, himself, did. Friends say they literally kept him alive. And indeed, he died just a few weeks after resigning in late February.

ALISTAIR COOKE: Just recently a British journalist who seemed to have a gift for making mischief where he couldn't find it, asked me if anybody in the BBC had ever asked me to retire, and was I going to do so anyway. I said the answer was no, and no. I've noticed if you retire, you'll keel over. The day of retirement from this assignment, which was given to me 50 years ago by the BBC official who bore the grand title of Director of the Spoken Word, the day of retirement is up to the Lord of us all, the great Timekeeper in the Sky, the true director of the spoken word.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:A sampling of his Letters from America can be found at the BBC website. It's a chance to hear a little more of what we've missed, the real masterpieces of the person known to most of us as merely a host in an armchair, the late, great Alistair Cooke. [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, staged stings of presumed pedophiles, plus men who hate shirts and the programs that love them.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media, from NPR. [FUNDING CREDITS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield with a few of your letters. Most of them concerned Brooke's interview with Morning Edition Host Bob Edwards, who will be leaving that post for a job as NPR Senior Correspondent. Kate Donnelly of Chicago writes: "It was so sad to listen to Bob Edwards grasp at straws to understand his pink slip. The situation smacks of bad and tactless management. Thanks to OTM for a sensitive and revealing interview."

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But that conversation left many listeners deeply unsatisfied: "Hearing Mr. Edwards say repeatedly that he had no idea why he'd been canned by NPR is not informative. It simply points out a gaping, unfilled hole in your story," writes Joshua Tanzer of Hoboken, New Jersey. Did that not make you want to find out why for yourselves? Why not interrogate the people who made the decision and get the answer rather than tell us repeatedly that you don't know?"

BOB GARFIELD:Most wrote in to say they were stunned by Bob Edward's re-assignment. Marty Weston writes: "I love his minimalist morning chatter. It makes getting up in the mornings easy, even when the day's events are troubling, the world is a mess, and the temptation is to pull the covers over my head." And Lee Ann Gilbertson adds: "I think NPR has done a great disservice, not only to Bob Edwards, but to its listeners."

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But there were a few dissenters, like Heidi J. Levin of Chicago. She writes: "In listening to the interview, I was struck by Bob Edwards' more outgoing and assertive personality versus what one normally hears in the morning. While I like Bob Edwards' approach now, as it focuses on those reporting on the news who are there and have something meaningful to say, I wonder if Bob were just a little more like he was on your interview, whether he would be leaving."

BOB GARFIELD:This postscript now, to our stories two weeks ago about VNRs -- video news releases packaged by public relations firms to look like actual news and distributed by various major news feeders, including CNN. In the uproar over the Department of Health and Human Services' VNR which ran as an apparent news story on stations around the country, CNN has changed its VNR policy to segregate and strictly label PR material from its other news feeds. Thanks for your letters. Keep sending them along to us at onthemedia@wnyc.org, [MUSIC UP & UNDER] and we'll ask one more time, don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name.
BOB GARFIELD: Consider the sting. Agents go on the internet posing as young girls and boys and engage in on line chats with adults. The talk turns to sex, sometimes at the initiation of the fake teen; sometimes at the initiation of the targeted predator at the other end. Arrangements are made for them to meet. The target drives to a remote location for a sexual encounter with a child, only to discover the trap. It's a standard law enforcement technique, but what if the agents aren't cops but, in fact, vigilantes running the sting in cooperation with the local TV station? The unsuspecting men show up at a rented house only to be met with lights, microphones and cameras. Their startled mugs are then broadcast on the evening news. That's precisely what's been happening recently in several cities around the country. News crews have been teaming up with Perverted-Justice.com, a group that for the past two years has been setting up stings and posting pictures, phone numbers and addresses of the men they snare on the web. KCTV in Kansas City hired the group to help snare sixteen internet predators for its February sweeps week special. [SOUND Of CAR TIRES LOUDLY SQUEALING]

MAN:These men just drove to a house they'd never seen to meet a person they don't know for a reason that most people would define as perverted.

MAN: What'd you say [...?...]?

MAN: You're not here to have sex with a 14 year old girl?

MAN: Well, no!

VOICEOVER: Yes, he is. How do we know? Because we set it up.

BOB GARFIELD: Sam Zeff is executive producer of special projects at KCTV, and he joins me now. Sam, welcome to the show.

SAM ZEFF: Thank you, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Let me ask you, understanding that you're not law enforcement, and understanding that the men lured into this trap will, in all probability, have their lives ruined, what did you do to make absolutely certain that every "i" was dotted, every "t" crossed -- that these were genuine predators and not casual chatters on a lark, fooling around with no evil intent?

SAM ZEFF: Well, I can tell you that none of the men who came to our door were registered sex offenders; none even had a criminal record. Now-- what did we go through to make sure that we had - that we properly identified every man to make sure that we didn't put the wrong man with the wrong chat or the wrong face or the wrong name on television? The reporting on that was extensive from checking databases to actually taking these men's photographs out to check with neighbors to say, is this the man that you know as ______ (blank). It took weeks, hundreds of man hours to do. And by the time we put the story on television, we had uncovered that one of the men who came to our door was a recruiter for the United States Navy -- a man, Bob, a man who every day spent his time in high schools and malls, meeting with kids the same age as the person he thought he was going to meet to have sex. We uncovered a man who spent his evenings as a middle school and high school referee of volleyball. We uncovered a former federal police officer.

BOB GARFIELD: Has any of them been charged with a crime?

SAM ZEFF:No. Not to our knowledge, so far. Now, we know Navy NCIS is investigating our recruiter. That has so far not resulted in any charges, but that investigation is continuing.

BOB GARFIELD:At least one of the men stung by your investigation thinks that he was, in fact, lured into a situation that he would not otherwise have been in -- all of the sexual conversation was very much led by the person who he thought was a 14-year old girl --everything that he said in response was qualified by the LOL code which means "laugh out loud," which means "ha, ha, ha, just kidding." And though they discussed him showing up with condoms and liquor -- he showed up without a condom or any liquor. He further claims that he never even would have gone there had he not gotten a phone call promising sex from a woman he was certain was middle-aged. It's quite clear that this never would have held up in court in a law enforcement case against a suspected pedophile. Are the journalistic standards different?

SAM ZEFF: I think they absolutely are. As a journalist, I have the ethical obligation to make sure that the person I'm stinging, that I'm sure of his intent, and then I have to give him a reasonable chance to respond. And I would say, Bob, that talking about drinking and getting high and bringing prophylactics over to a 14-year old's house is, on its face, irresponsible. The only information this man had was what he gained through the chat. And I would say that any reasonable and responsible adult, if he is in a chat room, and all of a sudden that chat turns sexual, he has got to disengage that chat immediately. He didn't do it. He got in his car. He drove to this remote location-- I'm absolutely convinced of what his intentions were.

BOB GARFIELD: What about the larger issue of simply trawling for perverts. Is that the job of a news organization?

SAM ZEFF:Is it a huge problem? Yes. Is it our responsibility as journalists to show that problem and to expose it? It's absolutely our job. Local law enforcement is behind the curve. I mean we have the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri in our piece, saying as much. We've heard from police officers in this area, prosecutors, people who we deal with all the time - tell us, you know what - your story was right on. And I've heard and read in various publications that law enforcement in other communities where this particular story has been done are upset. I can tell you that here in Kansas City, only the FBI so far has had anything negative to say about our story.

BOB GARFIELD:God, this is a tough one. Let me tell you why it's so tough for me. You know, I'm, I'm certainly delighted that internet predators are being outed. I'm queasy journalistically, but can't even tell you why. I mean I cannot articulate for you what it is about this that makes me nervous…

SAM ZEFF: I think that your journalistic, if I may, instincts are right on, and they were exactly the feelings I had before we went down this road. But when you see the men, when you read the chats, when you understand that law enforcement, at least here in Kansas City, doesn't seem to have the ability to track these people down, and when you weigh the fact that you've got these 16 men that you've identified, that you've shown on television, and when you weigh that against the possibility of 16 young lives being ruined, I, I, I don't see how you can't move forward with this investigation and not feel good about its broadcast.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Sam, thank you very much.

SAM ZEFF: Bob, it's my pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Sam Zeff is executive producer for special projects at KCTV in Kansas City.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's true that KCTV earned huge ratings for their pedophile sting series, and maybe it was, as Sam Zeff says, because they were performing a much-needed service in naming and shaming potential internet predators. Or, maybe it was that people just really enjoy the humiliating spectacle of a bust caught on tape. [MUSIC]

ANNOUNCER: North Carolina, 1994. Officers find themselves against an enraged man with a shotgun. [MAN SPEAKS OVER LOUDSPEAKER] It's a delicate matter, but one the police are equipped to handle.

BOB GARFIELD:The show is called World's Wildest Police Videos. The image is a shotgun-wielding man, shirtless on his porch, raving at police. He has gotten himself stinking blotto. He has done violence in his household. Now he is making terrorist threats and a total jackass of himself for all his neighbors and a few million others to see. Renee Lesk can scarcely believe her good fortune.

RENEE LESK: He's just this big, fat guy on his porch, raving with an enormous gun, and they're all shirtless, none of them are wearing shirts.

BOB GARFIELD:She is lucky, because in addition to having no shirts, these shotgun-wielding, porch-stander-onners of this nation also have no shame. This man signed a release permitting World's Wildest Police Videos to broadcast his image, and the owner of most every other unobscured face you see on these gritty police reality shows has done the same thing. Lesk is in charge of obtaining these releases. She is awash in 8 by 11 forms ready to be stuffed into dozens and dozens of thick vinyl binders.

RENEE LESK: There's an alternate paper universe that agrees with the visual universe that you look at every day.

BOB GARFIELD: But why? Why let some TV producer trade in your personal humiliation? Fred Heilbrun, a permissions specialist who has obtained nearly 10,000 releases for such shows as True Stories of the Highway Patrol offers a number of explanations from malignant macho to civic-mindedness to, every so often, cash money. But it is still hard for him to believe how easy it is. Once, he says, he was with a camera crew at a heroin bust, and one of the suspects bolted directly toward them.

FRED HEILBRUN: The cameraman, who was built like a halfback, steps out. The suspect falls backward into a wall, and the cameraman sticks the camera in this fellow's face, and then the cameraman follows it up by saying "Don't move or I'll shoot you." And the fellow threw his hands up in the air and complied like the cameraman had a, an MP-5 pointed at the guy's head. It was just amazing.

BOB GARFIELD: Did you approach him to sign a release?

FRED HEILBRUN: Oh, yeah, and-- he signed.

BOB GARFIELD:To Renee Lesk, the stop-or-I'll-shoot gambit suggests another possibility for suspects' willingness to sign on the dotted line -- the confusion over who is a cop and who isn't. And maybe the hope that cooperation with the camera crew will yield softer treatment from the police down the line. Fred Heilbrun says cultivating that confusion is unethical, and often enough, he says, an opposite force may be at work.

FRED HEILBRUN: They found out that, when the police come through your door, you know, knock it off its hinges, come barreling through, throw you into the wall, handcuff you -- and then somebody walks up and says Hi, my name's Fred. Has anybody told you what the cameras are about? I, you know, the people relaxed.

BOB GARFIELD: Bad Cop, Good Producer.

FRED HEILBRUN: Yeah. You know, I, I have to admit - I, I learned some of my techniques from watching the police work.

BOB GARFIELD:One thing that all release-getters quickly learn is that the culture of reality television and the culture in general work in their favor. In this society, appearing on television is deemed an achievement in its own right, and neither the subjects nor the audience seem to be all that concerned about how that is achieved. You know: Hey, Tony -- I saw you on TV. Was that your shotgun? What happened to your shirt?

FRED HEILBRUN: I think my favorite was a fellow who, to pay off a debt to a dealer, offered his barn to be set up as a meth lab. The way the police found out about him was his electric bill, which should have been perhaps 150 dollars a month was something like 10,000 dollars a month, and he wasn't paying it.

BOB GARFIELD: As police raided the barn, the guy quickly grabbed -- a guitar and started singing.

FRED HEILBRUN: When I told him what I wanted, he said will you show me singing? And I said if you'd like. And he signed the release.

BOB GARFIELD: No matter that he faced 20 years in prison.

FRED HEILBRUN:He wanted to be sure that he was going to have at least ten seconds of himself singing on a national television show. So we gave that to him.

BOB GARFIELD: How was the song?

FRED HEILBRUN:It was terrible. Just terrible. I think he, if I recall, he was doing like Puff, the Magic Dragon and just-- oh, it was just awful.

BOB GARFIELD:There's yet another category -- the chastened criminal who wants to steer others away from foolish choices. Lesk's biggest coup was getting a release from a woman arrested for DWI who was taped for an hour making sexual advances on the arresting officer.

WOMAN: I can't help it, because hell I just know you're good-looking.

MAN: I appreciate that.

WOMAN: [...?...] beautiful brown eyes.

MAN: Sign right there for me okay?

WOMAN: I'll try.

BOB GARFIELD: That was, as they say, this lady's rock bottom, and she was persuaded that making her self a laughingstock on television was an appropriate way to begin her new life of sobriety. But of all the explanations for why Lesk's vinyl binders are so full, maybe the best is the most obvious.

RENEE LESK: Criminals are stupid.

BOB GARFIELD: And the best illustration is a piece of tape aired on her show for which no release was necessary, because the suspect's face was not visible.

RENEE LESK: We saw a guy walk into a convenience store with a paper bag over his head, no holes. You know, obviously having some trouble seeing. And he tried to rob it, and it was so-- he seemed so-- so ineffectual, because of the paper bag and the no holes that the clerk didn't really understand that he was seriously trying to rob him, and he didn't have a weapon. So the clerk just said -- I, I'm sorry, I don't underst-- I don't understand you. And the guy with the bag on his head just walked away. Criminals are stupid. They're criminals because they're stupid. Their stupidity puts them in jail. Their stupidity keeps them in jail. When they get out of jail, their stupidity puts them back in jail. Criminals are stupid.

BOB GARFIELD: As for the zeitgeist image of the shirtless ruffian on his porch, raving, Lesk says be not misled. There are no more of these people nowadays, she believes, than there ever were.

RENEE LESK: I think there are just more cameras. I gotta tell you, I think the shirtless guy was raving at the police for our grandparents and our great-grandparents. But now there are cameras to capture it, they look for opportunities to capture it, now we all see it, and the guy without the shirt doesn't mind. He wants his rants to be heard. He's perfectly happy with that development. [THEME MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD:58:00 That's it for this week's show. On the Media was directed by Katya Rogers and produced by Janeen Price, Megan Ryan and Tony Field, and edited-- by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director, and Rob Christiansen our engineer; we had help from Derek John. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts and MP3 downloads at onthemedia.org, and email us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media, from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.

About On The Media

WNYC’s weekly investigation into how the media shapes our world view. Veteran journalists Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield give you the tools to survive the media maelstrom.

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